


you be my king, and i'll be your castle

by untrustworthyglitch



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Powers, F/M, Family Fluff, M/M, Romance, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-08
Updated: 2018-11-11
Packaged: 2019-03-02 08:33:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 13,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13314438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/untrustworthyglitch/pseuds/untrustworthyglitch
Summary: Seven people in one tiny studio apartment is a bit crowded and doesn't sound great. It sounds even less great when you factor in a soulless landlord hellbent on extracting every cent and bit of happiness from their ragtag little family, a homeless orphan kid with way too much intelligence, a quest to finally find a job that doesn't suck, and their heat getting turned off every damn week even though winter is rapidly approaching.For some reason, the stunning guy who works at the funeral home two blocks over doesn't seem to mind, and Taako is sure as hell not going to press the issue.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> welcome to another episode of me starting a multichapter fic, this time starring the fact that i watch the musical Rent when i'm sick and have a thing for found families, so please enjoy this thing!
> 
> i don't have any semblance of a post schedule right now because i'm starting a new semester, but rest assured i have an entire plan and i know exactly how this resolves, so it's just a game of how long it ends up becoming, which from my current standpoint is probably Fairly Long, perhaps edging into plain ole Long territory.
> 
> as always, catch me over at untrustworthyglitch.tumblr.com to shout about taz and youtube (i promise i'm very friendly and always willing to yell)

Taako throws himself onto the couch with force and buries his face directly into the softest pillow his hands can find. He screams into it for a good long while and stays there, nose pressed into fabric that, _ew,_ really could use some Febreeze. He only lets up when he feels a gentle hand on his back.

“You okay?” Magnus says, the big caring goofball, and Taako screams again.

“Peachy, my dude,” he says into the pillow when he’s emptied his lungs. Magnus shoves at him until Taako gets the idea to scoot over until Magnus can sit next to him, perched on the edge of the couch, and continue patting Taako’s shoulders in a manner that is probably intended to be comforting, and absolutely would be if not for the fact that Magnus has giant, heavy hands. 

“Wanna talk about it?” Magnus asks. Gods, he’s so damn _nice._

“Nope,” Taako replies. Magnus must get bored with trying to rub soothing circles onto Taako’s back, because he starts running callused fingers through Taako’s hair, and nope, that’s not happening, no way is this great big buffoon going to wreck Taako’s style. Taako sits up in an attempt to dislodge him. Going by the triumph in Magnus’ eyes, that’s exactly what he wanted.

“Bad day?” he prompts.

Taako gives him double middle fingers and says, “Fuckin’ yeah, my guy, good detective work there.”

“The Chinese place on the corner still owes me a favor. Wanna order takeout before the others get home and leave them to make their own dinner?” Magnus asks.

“Please.” Taako slumps back onto the couch and throws a hand over his eyes dramatically. Magnus’ weight disappears and Taako listens to him chitchat his way through a polite phone conversation with who he hopes is the owner of the Chinese place on the corner. The lady who runs the place must have figured out that their little family is damn near homeless on a good day, because they sometimes get extra food, and every once in a while a ten dollar bill finds its way into the bag. Call it charity, but Taako is definitely not too proud to accept it. Money is money, food is food. At least they’re not stealing it this time. 

“Chinese in fifteen minutes,” Magnus says. “Also, she wants me to take a look at their radiator.”

Taako perks up at that. Magnus is largely unemployed, like they all are, and odd jobs are his chief source of income. Sometimes people even send him home with a dozen cookies, or a pie. He claims it’s because he’s so rustically charming, but Taako doesn’t believe that for half a heartbeat.

“Do you know anything about radiators?” he asks, one eyebrow quirked.

“Nope,” Magnus says easily. “But I’m good at cars, so this shouldn’t be too bad.”

Taako doesn’t get a chance to inform Magnus about the many, many differences between radiators and cars because their door is throw open with force by his twin sister.

“Holy _shit,”_ Lup shouts. Her face is red with anger. 

“Babe,” Barry tries. He looks mad too, but he’s also trying to put a calming hand on Lup’s shoulder, which means the situation only ranks about an eight out of ten for Imminent Danger.

“You two would not _believe_ what I have to deal with,” Lup seethes. She throws herself onto the other end of the couch and doesn’t seem to care that she’s crushing her brother’s feet, which he pulls toward his body immediately. He just painted those toenails. No way in hell is he letting Lup chip them.

“What happened, Lulu?” he asks.

“Fucking Greg Grimmaldis,” she says. “He owes me fifteen bucks, and when I tried to get him to pay up, his fucking slimy ass got me fired! For ‘gambling in the workplace!’ Not my fault he doesn’t know not to make bets he can’t follow through on!”

Taako’s heart drops. Oh. Lup was one of the only ones with actual, steady work that paid more than the bare minimum. Without that income, they’ll have to cut back even more. They already can’t afford to buy many groceries and can hardly make rent. Winter is coming on fast, and they desperately need to be able to afford to keep heat on in their tiny studio apartment. 

“We’ll be okay,” Barry is saying. “I still work there, and Lucretia just got hired at the library, and Merle has the greenhouse.”

“The greenhouse is closing for the winter in two weeks,” Lup says distantly. She has both arms wrapped around her chest and is staring into the far wall like maybe it holds the secret to financial stability in its smooth beige paint.

“I got another job with the Chinese place,” Magnus offers.

“Yeah, and I just back from an interview with that shitty diner on Fifth Street to start waitressing there,” Taako says.

Lup sighs and puts her face in her hands. “I guess I’ll have to start looking through the classifieds again.”

“That’s the spirit!” Taako tells her. He shifts on the couch until they’re side by side, pressed together from shoulder to waist, and takes her hand in his. It’s shaking ever-so-slightly. She’s more upset than she’s letting on, but that’s okay. No matter what, they’ll be alright. If they could survive a childhood sleeping in alleys and pickpocketing wallets from strangers, they can survive a little bit of hard times. They have a family to help them now. They’ll survive. 

The doorbell rings, and Taako and Magnus share a look of disappointment.

“Hey, Mango cashed in a favor with that Chinese place and now we have some free fried rice. You guys wanna split it and keep it hush-hush?” Taako asks. The response is enthusiastic, and the four of them end up sitting on the couch together, eating the rice directly out of the containers because none of them want to wash dishes. There’s an extra egg roll at the bottom of the bag, and Lup and Magnus bicker politely over it for a full two minutes before realizing that Barry stealthily ate it when neither were watching. Taako’s impressed with his daringness. Even he is not brave enough to come between his two most intimidating friends and food.

“Barold J. Bluejeans,” Lup scolds. “See if you ever get kinky birthday sex ever again, you betrayer. You dirty liar. You filthy cheat.”

“Hey,” he protests, at the same time Taako screams, “Too much information!”

“Shh, guys, less talking and more eating. Dav should be home soon,” Magnus says. They hurry to finish shoveling the Chinese into their mouths at once. If anyone else found them sneakily eating Chinese food, there’d be hell to pay, but if Davenport finds them it’s basically the end of the world. 

“Davenport is busy traveling right now,” Barry says, but he still looks nervous. “Isn’t he?”

“I think he left for another trip this morning.” Taako tries to remember, but their beloved captain spends so much of his time traveling that he’s really never entirely sure of the man’s whereabouts. Either Dav is home and doing his best to parent them into submission, or he’s off in a hostel somewhere, traveling as far as he can on next to no money. 

“And Lucretia had to pick up the night shift today,” Lup points out.

“And Merle has church group tonight,” Magnus says.

Taako stares at them, deadpan. “Are you telling me, right now to my face, that we did not have to be sneaky about this. Are you saying that I could be enjoying my meal at a normal pace and not be whispering about it. Are you looking me in the eye and telling me that this baller deception is all for naught.”

“Uh,” Magnus says. “Yeah.”

“Sweet!” Taako says, and kicks his feet up onto the coffee table. It’s one they’d salvaged from the dumpster in the alley where Lup once beat up a guy who kept catcalling her. When they’d hauled it home Lucretia and Davenport had both raised eyebrows and made comments about how it was probably in the garbage for a reason, given that it was missing a leg, but it only took a little bit of tender loving care from their resident carpentry genius to get it back into functional shape. It’s probably their most acceptable piece of salvaged furniture, given that their couch has several broken springs and the twins’ bunk bed is probably going to fall apart and crush Lup and Barry in their sleep one of these days. 

“So, you said you had that interview with the place on Fifth?” Barry prods when the conversation dies down.

Taako sighs and sets his fork down on the coffee table with force. “Sure fuckin’ did.”

“And?” Lup prompts, clearly not noticing Magnus’ look of panic as he recalls the dramatics of earlier. Now that Taako thinks about it, perhaps screaming into a pillow was a bit much. At best the situation warranted a long shower and a dangerously sharp new manicure.

“Got the gig,” he says, to thunderous applause.

“Oh, that’s so great!” Lup shouts.

“Knew you had it in ya, buddy,” Magnus says.

“When do you start?” Barry asks.

Taako levels him with a look. “Barold, my dear, my oldest friend, I start tomorrow.”

Lup stands suddenly, dislodging Barry’s feet from her lap. She holds out a hand to Taako, who takes it and allows himself to be dragged to the wardrobe in the far corner of their apartment. She tears through it, all the while gushing about how he’s going to need something to wear, because his fashion sense is far too dramatic for waiting tables. He doesn’t bother to tell her that her fashion sense is approximately a billion times more dramatic than his.

“Also,” she says, throwing a sensible black blouse at him. “Fuck you. Barry is not your oldest friend. We shared a fuckin’ womb, my man.”

“Yeah, and I didn’t even move in here until I met Lup,” Barry calls from the couch.

“Fine, I retract the sentiment,” Taako sniffs. “Magnus, congratulations on the promotion. You are now my oldest friend.”

“Fuck yeah!” Magnus shouts, and Lup rolls her eyes to the ceiling.

“Fine, I guess I’ll just quietly wait my turn. Tell me, do I rank before or after Merle?” 

Taako laughs out loud at that. “Before. Definitely before.”

“Thank god,” she says.

They spend the rest of the evening in quiet domesticity. Lup changes the sheets on the bed she shares with Barry. Taako whines until she changes his too. Barry and Magnus make an excursion to the 100% definitely haunted laundry room in the basement of their building, which Magnus refuses to set foot in alone and which Barry has a weird love for because he’s into ghosts and all that creepy shit. Merle shows up sometime after Taako has finished jotting down a grocery list for the week, and Lucretia drags herself home from her double shift at the library right as Magnus is starting to complain that he’s tired.

“Hey, Taako, tell them what you told us earlier,” Lup says, elbowing him in the ribs.

“Ah, yes,” he says dramatically. He stands on the coffee table, ignoring Lucretia’s hum of disapproval, and spreads his hands wide. He looks each of them in the eye in turn before tossing his hair over his shoulder, pausing for effect, and saying, “I’m gay.”

Everyone laughs, which is exactly what he wanted.

“Also, I got hired at the shitty diner on Fifth Street and I start waiting tables tomorrow. No, I will not be giving out free food,” he says in a rush, and dismounts the coffee table. 

“Hey, why were you so upset earlier? If you got hired, isn’t that a good thing?” Magnus asks, all furrowed eyebrow and concerned eyes.

Taako sighs. “I mean, it’s a great thing, but on the way home I tripped over the sidewalk and fell right on my perfect, perfect ass.”

“Aw, poor baby,” Merle says mockingly. Taako doesn’t even bother to flip him off.

“And then,” he says, and takes a shuddering breath for authenticity’s sake. “Then, I got helped up by the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen. Gods, he was perfect. I will never be able to love another.”

“You say that about every beautiful man you see,” Lup points out. She’s right, of course, but this time is different. This man, beautiful and radiant and stunning, is the one he’s going to be thinking about for the rest of his life. When he’d extended a hand to help Taako up, he’d been smiling, and the light had caught his eyes just so, and Taako’s heart actually stopped. He’d been pretty sure he’d died and this man was the endlessly attractive angel of death come to take him to whatever beautiful, well-dressed heaven existed beyond this drab plane of existence.

“Are you okay?” he’d asked, doing a very good job of masking his laughter at Taako’s unfortunate fall.

“Yeah,” Taako had breathed, and taken the man’s hand. It was cold but firm, and he’d helped Taako up easily before giving him one last small smile and turning on his heel and retreating into the building across the street from Taako’s new place of employment.

Taako realizes he’s staring into space, and forcefully yanks himself back into the present.

“Perhaps, but he works right across the street, which means I’ll have to look at him frequently and often, and I just don’t know if my heart can take the strain,” he says.

Barry raises one finger, like they’re in school and he needs to be called on before he can speak. Or at least, that’s what Taako assumes school is like. He hadn’t gone. He and Lup had been too busy sleeping in dirty alleys and running from child protective services to bother with a proper education.

“Yes, Barry,” Lucretia says, taking pity on him.

“Isn’t there a funeral home across from the shitty diner?” Barry asks.

Taako heaves a sigh. “Got it in one, my man. I’ve fallen for Death himself.”

“Okay, Emily Dickinson,” Lucretia teases. “I’m sure you’ll survive. For now, I have to work early tomorrow, and I’d appreciate if we could turn the lights down a bit so I can get some sleep.”

“Yeah, I’m beat,” Magnus says. He yawns widely, probably just for emphasis, but it definitely does the trick of setting off a yawn chain that lasts all the way until everyone is in bed and the lights are off.

“Sleep tight!” Lup shouts as soon as the room goes quiet. Barry makes a startled noise, and Taako leans over the side of the top bunk to tell her to please shut up and to also go fuck herself.

It doesn’t take him long to fall asleep, and when he does, he dreams of the myriad things that could go horribly wrong the instant he sets foot in an eatery.


	2. Chapter 2

Taako wakes up to his alarm going off and groans. He sits up slowly, taking his sweet time, and blinks at the watery sunlight streaming through the windows. It takes only a moment for a pit of dread to settle in this pit of his stomach.

He has to go to work today.

“Morning, little bro,” Lup says. She and Barry are in the corner of the apartment they refer to as the kitchen, wearing each other’s bathrobes. There’s a pan of something sizzling on the stove and Barry is perched on the counter sipping coffee from a chipped mug. 

“I’m older than you,” Taako replies, swinging his legs over the side of the top bunk and leaping down. The bunk beds had been a joke, at first, just something they spotted on a corner waiting to be taken away by the trash collectors at the nearest opportunity. Taako had elbowed his sister and laughingly suggested taking them home, so as to save on space, and Lup had immediately sprinted the remaining block to the apartment to grab Magnus and beg him to lug the bed home. 

“I’m taller than you,” she laughs. “Now, come get some egg before you have to go to work.”

“Thank you for the egg,” he says dutifully, taking the plate from her outstretched hand. 

“You’re welcome,” she replies imperiously. 

“Eat fast. You’ll have to walk because Lucretia took the bike,” Barry says as he helps himself to a sizable portion of the eggs. Lup swats him with her spatula and he doesn’t have the decency to look ashamed, instead staring at his wife with an expression so soft it makes Taako decide he doesn’t really want to eat his own eggs, like, at all.

“Why does she get the bike?” he whines as he pushes eggs around on the plate. Anxiety boils in his stomach and he’s not entirely sure he could force himself to eat even if he hadn’t just had to witness such a disgusting display of Marital Softness.

“She got to it first, slowpoke,” Lup says. She taps her wrist until Taako gets the memo and hurries his way through getting ready. He throws on the most modest outfit he can find and steals a pair of Lup’s flats. His hair goes up in a bun and he remembers to take off his earrings and bracelets before whisking his way out of the apartment and down the several flights of stairs to the street.

The shitty diner is only two blocks away, but he’s running behind, so he has to book it on the way there. He’s so preoccupied by potentially being late to his first day at a real paying job that he forgets to feel anxious until he’s there and the diner is staring him down with it’s neon signs and striped awning. He's pretty sure it's threatening him with its aura, or whatever.

He gulps. Inhales. Blinks. Takes a step forward.

“Oh, hey, are you the new guy?” someone says as soon as he steps inside. It’s a small place, all dim lighting and shiny tabletops and cheerful attempts at seeming vintage. The speaker is a woman behind the counter. 

“Yeah, that’d be me,” he says. 

The woman takes a step, looks him up and down, and gasps. “Holy. Shit. _Taako?”_

“Got it in one,” Taako laughs, but it's very forced. He gives her finger guns to hide the fact that his hands just started shaking.

“Taako, from TV?” She laughs. Her eyes are round and excited. “Oh, holy _shit._ What are you _doing_ here?”

“Uh, working?” he tries.

“Oh, wow. I mean, what are you doing as a waiter? Shouldn’t you be, I dunno, a head chef at some five star restaurant somewhere?”

Taako, for one second, almost tells her. He almost tells her about his brief stint as a television personality. He almost tells her that for one shining moment in time he was happy and he didn’t have to worry about whether or not his sister was going to starve. He almost says that everything was going right, so perfectly right, for the first time in his life until he got too cocky and fucked it up so bad that he hasn’t been able to force himself inside an eatery until this very moment. He almost spills the entire sordid tale, complete with the part where he gave an entire studio audience food poisoning so bad people were hospitalized, people almost died. He almost looks this stranger right in the eye and goes into detail about his backstabbing cohost, who got too jealous of Taako’s time in the spotlight and sabotaged the entire thing and left Taako to take all of the blame and the lawsuits and the feeling of being tossed right back on the streets the studio executives found him on.

Taako looks at this grinning woman and swallows what he almost says.

“Well, ya know,” he tells her with another forced laugh, spreading his hands. “Gotta move on sometime.”

“I guess,” she laughs. 

“Anyway, where do I clock in?” And he’s back with the charisma and the sparkling personality and the winning smile. 

“Right back here. I’m Ren, by the way,” she tells him.

Taako follows Ren behind the counter, where she walks him through his general duties and hands him an apron. He spends the next six hours intermittently following her around and trying to function on his own. He quickly finds that he has a knack for charming customers into ordering more than they’d planned on, but is absolutely terrible at remembering orders without writing them down. Either way, he gets hella tips, which is the best.

“Thanks, come again!” he says, bright and loud, to an elderly couple, who give him cheerful waves on their way out the door. He scoops up the tip and shoves it into a pocket before grabbing their discarded plates and heading for the kitchen.

“I’m supposed to tell you that you can clock out,” Ren says. She’s elbow deep in soapy water, sweating and with flyaway hair, but she seems happy. Over the shift Taako has decided that this job kinda sucks, but Ren seems to love it. 

“Oh, natch,” he says, and does just that. 

It’s just finished raining when Taako steps outside. He glowers at the clouds and wishes he’d worn his hat, or maybe grabbed Lup’s umbrella. The bulk of the rain seems to have passed, but every now and again a sprinkle falls, sending rings through the puddles that have gathered on the sidewalk. Taako very carefully avoids the uneven bit where he fell yesterday and equally carefully does not wish to see the handsome stranger who had pulled him to his feet.

“Hey!” someone yells. Taako’s heart picks up, just slightly. 

Speak of the devil.

He turns with his best Flirtatious Grin™ on and bats his eyelashes, thankful he’d remembered to put on mascara that morning. He aims to say something casual, something enticing, but his breath is stolen the instant he lays eyes on the guy.

He’s just as stunning as Taako remembers, all dark skin and perfect hair and straight teeth, but today he’s wearing a suit just the right shade of gray to stand out against the steely skyline. It’s obviously tailored to fit him perfectly, hugging his waist and shoulders like a jealous lover, with silver cufflinks that glitter at his wrists. There’s a gold chain around his neck and in another life Taako’s fingers might itch to steal it, but all he’s in the mood to steal is this guy’s heart.

“Hi, handsome,” he chokes out eventually, and then wants to smack himself. Way to be subtle.

The man laughs. “Hi yourself.”

“I’m Taako,” Taako says, and then because he’s a stupid, stupid idiot he continues, “Ya know, from TV?”

“Kravitz,” says the beautiful man, grinning so stunningly that Taako is pretty sure he’s actually dead. He holds out his hand, which Taako shakes enthusiastically. It’s just as cold as it was yesterday, but Taako ain’t complaining. 

“Nice to meet you, Kravitz,” he purrs.

“Glad I could catch up with you,” Kravitz says.

Taako briefly reverts back into his usual asshole tendencies and says, “Too bad you couldn’t catch me yesterday. Pretty sure I have bruises.”

Kravitz laughs at that. Taako ascends to a whole other plane of existence. He’s that pretty.

“Sorry about that,” Kravitz says. “And sorry about this, but I have to go. I’ve been called in to work unexpectedly and my boss is expecting me.”

Taako glances at the funeral home across the street. It used to be just a regular house, large and opulent, until somewhere along the lines someone bought it and decided it should house the recently deceased instead of the fabulously wealthy. It’s not a terrible place to look at. There’s no air of dismay and misery about it, no obvious signs of despair. 

“What, somebody beef it when you least expected it?” Taako jokes.

Kravitz does not smile when he replies, “Yes, actually.”

“Well, fuck,” Taako says, with feeling. 

“Agreed.” Kravitz sighs. “Will I see you tomorrow?”

“You fuckin’ better,” Taako says.

They part ways, Kravitz hurrying across the street, Taako standing on the sidewalk and watching him go. What just happened? Did a beautiful man just take an actual interest in him? Or did he have a conversation with a random polite stranger who doesn’t actually want to see him again? 

It starts raining again. Taako decides that he can have this small emotional crisis at home, and books it.

When he gets back, he finds his entire family clustered on the couch, where Barry is sitting in Lup’s lap with an open bottle of wine in hand. Lup has her hand in his hair and Magnus is patting his knee consolingly, and Taako is definitely not in the mood for whatever emotional turmoil is rocking his family’s boat tonight.

“Hey, how was work?” Barry asks. Taako blinks at him and shares a look with Lup. The look indicates that Taako had better kick off his shoes and plop down on the threadbare rug and get to consoling, pronto, because something shitty went down today.

“Could ask you the same question, my man,” he says. He toes off his shoes and prods them with his feet until they’re in the pile of miscellaneous footwear by the door and perches on the edge of the coffee table, right next to an empty bottle of wine. Oh, goodie. It’s a two bottle kind of night.

Barry laughs humorlessly. “Work was great, right up until I got fired.”

Well, shit.

“Wanna tell ch’boy about it or nah?” Taako says.

“I already told everyone else,” Barry mutters. “Same reason Lup got fired. Gambling, or some shit.”

“Fucking Greg Grimmaldis,” Lup seethes. Her cheeks are stained red with rage, and it’s obvious to Taako that she’s working very hard to keep her composure. After so long with Lup as the only person in his life, Taako is very good at reading her, and right now she’s an open book with “ANGER” printed on every page in eighty point font.

“That blows,” Taako says, trying for sympathy. He very obviously misses the mark, but Barry gives him a smile anyway, so it’s probably a win.

“The good news is that we’re still breaking even, because Magnus just got hired at the Chinese place we like,” Barry says.

“Oh, sick,” Taako says. He leans over to clap a smiling Magnus on the shoulder. “Does this mean free shit? Because I’m starving.”

“There’s lo mein in the fridge,” Magnus confesses, and Taako promptly goes to make himself a plate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if anyone was wondering, the song Color in Your Cheeks by my favorite band of all time The Mountain Goats is a pretty good song to get the vibe of the IPRE in this, and it's at the top of my writing playlist at the moment
> 
> thanks for the feedback!! i always cry a little when i get nice responses


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello and welcome to the thing i just banged out in like two hours tops because this semester is stressing me the hell out and i'm ready for a little bit of writing as a coping mechanism! also pls know that my outline for this is currently fourteen chapters plus an epilogue, so strap yourselves in, but know that i know exactly where i want this to go so it should get there in a moderately timely manner!
> 
> thanks so much for the positive feeback!! every kudos and comment makes me cry <3

“I swear to whatever gods might be listening, I’m going to murder my fucking boss,” is the first thing Taako hears, bright and early and far, far too loud. He lays there for a brief moment, blinking at the chipped ceiling, pondering whether it’s really worth it to sit up and engage in whatever angry conversation is surely brewing.

The decision is made for him when his alarm clock goes off, and he angrily slams a hand down on the snooze button.

“Rise and shine, sleeping beauty,” Merle calls. Taako sits up and sweeps his hair out of his eyes so that he can better glower at his housemate. Merle is on the couch, feet propped up on the coffee table, mug of tea steaming in his good hand. There’s anger written in the furrows of his brow, and Taako is so not in the mood.

“Shouldn’t you be at work, old man?” he grumbles, gracefully clambering down and onto the floor. The thin rug is cold underfoot, but he knows the tile flooring would be colder, so he slips on a pair of Lup’s slippers before trudging over to the couch, where he throws himself next to Merle.

“Nope,” Merle says, with far more rage than the word deserves. “Pan lied to me. Greenhouse is closing two weeks earlier than planned. I’m officially out of a job.”

“Well, fuck,” Taako replies.

“Yeah,” Merle agrees. They fall into silence, Merle stewing, Taako still in the process of dragging himself into wakefulness. Growing up, he’d learned to go from dead asleep to wide awake in an instant, but he’d been able to let go of some of his more self-preservatory tendencies in recent years. He still sometimes had trouble sleeping when he couldn’t hear his sister’s soft breathing, and he still sometimes forgot to eat regularly, but he was finally starting to get used to having a roof and four walls and a bed to curl up in at night.

“Hey, isn’t the big idiot supposed to be around?” Taako asks eventually.

Merle snorts derisively. “No, he’s washing dishes at the Chinese place all day. Supposedly he’s making minimum wage for it. Shoulda seen how excited he was.”

“I’ll bet,” Taako muses. He sits there on the couch for a few more minutes, listening to the wind rattle the windows, before he sighs and gets up. He takes far longer than he should in the shower and carefully plaits his hair. If the past few days have been any indication, he’s going to be seeing Mr. Tall-Dark-And-Ridiculously-Handsome around at some point, and he wants to look jaw-droppingly gorgeous. Or at least as jaw-droppingly gorgeous as is possible in a plain black polo with soup stains on it.

“Have fun at work,” Merle calls when Taako, who is running late, hurries down the stairs.

Outside, the wind blows directly through Taako’s thin jacket, and he pulls it tighter around himself. His braid is immediately ruined and the cold pricks tears from his eyes, wrecking the careful job he’d done with his mascara. He sighs, shivers, and resolves to pull himself together as soon as he’s clocked in. If he hurries, he’ll have time to fix himself before being technically late at all.

He almost makes it when he’s stopped by the exact inconvenience he wanted to experience.

“Taako, hey.”

Taako’s heart simultaneously drops and leaps in his chest. He turns with his best approximation of a sultry look, batting his eyelashes.

“Hey there, thug,” he says.

Kravitz laughs, smile bright. “Good morning.”

“Mornin’ to you too,” Taako replies.

Kravitz is stepping out of a rather nice car, black and shiny and perfectly parallel parked along the curb. He digs in his pocket for a moment and presses a handful of coins into the meter before stepping onto the sidewalk next to Taako.

“Shouldn’t there be a parking lot or something?” Taako says, still staring at the car. It’s a very nice car. Taako doesn’t even know how to drive.

“Today’s funeral is promising to be rather full, actually, and we need all the parking spaces we can get,” Kravitz says. He tucks a lock of hair behind one ear and gestures toward the funeral home, which is already bustling with activity. There are several expensive sports cars already parked in the lot, with men in slick black suits helping regal women out of the passenger seats. The few children are somber and follow their guardians with bored expressions.

“Hachi machi,” Taako says, and gives a low whistle. “Who died? A billionaire?”

“I’m not allowed to discuss,” Kravitz says, in a tone of voice that very clearly betrays how much he wants to discuss.

“Not even to a pretty face?” Taako gives him a winning grin, and he sighs.

“All I can say is that you’ll know if you check the front page of the newspaper,” is the eventual answer, which Taako counts as a win.

“Not much one for reading, myself, but you can come in and read the newspaper in the shitty diner any time. I hear they have a smoking hot wait staff,” Taako says. He leans in and winks, hoping that despite his smeared makeup and disaster hair Kravitz will think he’s charming. Cute, maybe. Hopefully even desirable.

“The shitty diner?” Kravitz repeats skeptically.

Taako laughs because the only other option is to die of mortification. “Uh, yeah, the shitty diner. My workplace? The Davy Lamp, I guess you’d probably call it, but it used to be owned by different people and boy howdy, was it a shitshow. Like, really fuckin’ bad. Yikes. Grossaroonie.”

“So you call the Davy Lamp ‘the shitty diner,’” Kravitz says, slowly, grinning, like he likes the way the absurdity feels in his mouth.

“Yup, and speaking of which, ch’boy’s gotta dash!” Taako blows him a quick kiss that is, in retrospect, entirely over the top and unnecessary, but he’s pretty sure he sees Kravitz flush, so he marks that down as another win.

The work day goes by in a whirlwind of fake laughter and minimal tips. All day cars pull in and out of the funeral home’s parking lot, always flashy, always ostentatious. Taako can’t pay much attention to the goings-on, but during his break he sits by a window and stares out at the slate sky and metal skyline and occasionally catches the dry, bored face of a mourner staring back at him. No one seems sad, which is entirely understandable, once he figures out whose funeral they’re attending. The newspaper headline, true to Kravitz’s word, tells Taako in bold, capital font that a local millionaire has died, and the article uses language far too scandalous and excited to ponder the lack of an inheritor.

“We do not suspect foul play, despite the sizeable fortune left after the death of the late Mr. McDonald,” says local police spokesperson Lieutenant Hurley. “The only known beneficiary would have been his grandson, who was reported missing several months ago. That case is ongoing, and any information should be directed to the local police station at once.”

Taako muses briefly on how much he’d like to get his gay little hands on that kind of a fortune, and puts it out of his mind for the rest of his shift.

“Would you mind staying an extra hour?” Ren asks when it’s time for Taako to finally, finally clock out. He opens his mouth to say no, absolutely not, no way in hell, but is stopped from speaking by two things: a) he really could use the money, and b) the tall, beautiful funeral home employee who is about to push open the door.

“Hell yeah, count me in,” he says in a rush, and is over by the door before the tiny bell tied above it can ring. “Welcome to the shitty diner!”

Kravitz laughs. “Are you always so enthusiastic?”

“Only if they’re handsome, or look like they tip well,” Taako spreads his hands wide and sweeps his arms in a grand gesture toward the booth nearest the heater. It’s the best spot in the house, and for once is entirely devoid of bitchy middle aged women who demand to speak to the manager because _heaven forbid_ their meal take more than thirty seconds to cook.

“Which am I?” Kravitz asks. Taako almost trips over his sensible sneakers. There’s definitely a note of flirting in Kravitz’s voice, too obvious to be wishful thinking.

“Hopefully, hot stuff, you’re both. Coffee?”

“Please.”

Taako makes sure that this is the best damn coffee he’s ever poured. He grabs one of the unchipped mugs and takes one of the good spoons to go with it. The coffee is on the table in record time, placed delicately so that it doesn’t slosh around in the mug, and Taako fixes Kravitz with his best smile when he perches on the side of the table and says, “Sugar?”

“If you’d be so kind,” Kravitz replies, meeting the smile perfectly.

Taako is definitely in trouble here.

“Have a good funeral today?” he says once he feels like the silence has begun to stretch.

Kravitz’s face immediately darkens, smile dimming. “Not as such, no.”

“What, money hungry distant family of the dead millionaire weren’t appropriately saddened by their loss? Shocking,” Taako says easily. “Hey, you want cherry pie? I’m pretty sure Ren’s making one right now, and I could totally dibs a piece for you.”

“One of my coworkers quit suddenly today, and we’re desperately understaffed as it is. Yes to the pie, thank you.”

Well, that adds a whole new level to this little flirtation. Taako bites his lip in thought for a moment, brow furrowed. He thinks briefly of how devastated Barry and Lup are at the loss of their job and contemplates how much budgeting he wants to do in the coming months. He ponders how many blankets he owns and whether or not they’d be sufficient if their evil landlord turns off their heat again. He gives one half-second of thought to whether he’d want to ever allow his sister anywhere near the guy he’s maybe-kinda-hopefully flirting with.

Money wins.

“What would someone have to do, to get a job interview over at the House of Death?” he asks, jerking his chin in the direction of the funeral home.

Kravitz blinks, as though that wasn’t what he was expecting to hear. “Don’t call it that, but they’d need to have some background in funeral service, of course, preferably a license, but at the moment we’re so short-staffed that any small semblance of experience would likely suffice. Why?”

“Sweet. One piece of cherry pie, comin’ right up.”

Taako hurries to the kitchen, where he informs Ren that he needs to take an emergency phone call as ASAP as possible. She looks startled but points him to the back door, and he steps in the alley with phone in hand, already thumbing through his recent calls to find the right number.

“Barold!” he almost shouts into the phone. Barry makes some small noise of confusion, but Taako barrels along. “When I get home, remind me to take a moment out of my busy schedule and tell you about how you can be putting your degree in dead-people-ology to good use!”

“Taako, I didn’t finish school, you know that,” Barry complains.

“Shut up and take the good news! And tell my sister to call the guy who forged our birth certificates! I need him to make you guys some licenses so you can practice necromancy, or whatever the fuck they do in funeral homes.” Taako’s hands are already going numb in the late autumn chill. He shivers, back pressed to rough bricks, and pointedly doesn’t think about sleeping in alleys. He’s beyond that, now. He’s good.

“Where is this coming from?” Barry asks. He sounds skeptical, which is to be expected, but Taako is far too enthusiastic about this cool new job opportunity to let his brother-in-law drag him down.

“Okay, talk to you later, loveyoubye,” he singsongs, and hangs up.

The kitchen is a welcome blast of warmth and bakery smell, and Ren looks at Taako with mild concern.

“Everything okay?” she asks, but he waves a hand dismissively.

“Totally chill,” he says. He glances down at the plate of cherry pie waiting to be served to Kravitz and frowns. “You know, you can sprinkle some graham cracker crumbs onto the bottom layer of crust to make it not soggy. Soaks up the juice really good.”

“Oh, I never thought of that,” Ren laughs. She glances at the pie, which is definitely on the soggy side. She’s a decent baker, Ren is, but she could be incredible with only a bit of training and a few tricks up her sleeve. She’d never be as good as Taako, of course, but she could be close.

“Take that tip for free,” he says with a wink, and puts a little extra swing in his hips when he takes the pie out to Kravitz.

“Thank you,” Kravitz says earnestly. Taako nods and goes to say something else, but an entire family of eight chooses that moment to walk into the otherwise deserted diner, and Taako’s night gets a lot more hectic.

He doesn’t get another chance to talk to Kravitz, but when he goes to clear the table, the napkin has a phone number written on it in neat, precise handwriting.

  


Taako starts the walk home around sunset, shivering in his thin jacket and clutching his styrofoam cup of leftover coffee close to his chest. Winter is coming on stronger than he thought it would. He must be getting out of touch with the seasons or something, after so long without having to sleep in the snow. He think it’s a good thing, probably, though he does worry that it’s making him soft 

There’s a kid on the corner, shuffling cards under the lone streetlight. It’s getting too dark to see properly, but the kid’s managed to draw a crowd of several people, all of whom cluster around his card table and watch carefully as he deftly moves the cards.

“Find the lady and you get you money back, lose her and it’s mine. I will tell you, I’m very smart. I have a very high win rate,” he says, high and childlike and far too practiced, and Taako’s heart does a weird little flip. It’s just a grift, just a con, to manipulate the inattentive out of their pocket change, but it’s one he knows all too well. He’s swindled plenty of folks out of their last five dollar bills that way.

“C’mon kid, there’s no way,” says a short man, who loses almost twenty dollars before Taako’s very eyes. He cheers loudly as the man groans, and the boy spares him only a glance before returning to his card tricks.

“Anyone else like to try their luck? I’m very good at this game,” the boy says. There aren’t any takers, and Taako watches as the crowd disperses, the short guy who just lost his money grumbling the whole way.

“Hey, good game, kid,” Taako says. He steps closer, and now that he can see the boy close up he can see that he’s shivering. He’s wearing only a duster, clearly far too big for his small frame, sleeves pushed up to reveal thin hands. There’s a smudge of dirt on his forehead, right under a mop of unkempt hair. His glasses are held together with tape.

“Thank you, sir,” the kid says, way too cheerful for a kid who is pretty obviously homeless. He shuffles the cards one last time and tucks them carefully in a pocket.

“Cold out, huh?” Taako muses leadingly. He watches the boy carefully.

“A bit,” the boy allows, pulling his hands inside his massive coat. He shivers as a gust of wind whistles through the street, whipping the sleeves of the duster angrily. Taako frowns, glances down at the coffee in his hands, and groans internally.

Whatever. It’s shitty coffee anyway.

“Here, kid, take this. It’s gonna stunt your growth, but it’s toasty warm,” he says. He sets the coffee on the rickety card table and doesn’t stick around to see whether the kid takes it or not. He probably won’t, if he’s as smart as he seems to think he is, but maybe he’ll at least hold it and let the warmth seep into his fingers.

Taako hurries home. It’s too cold to be out tonight.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ayyyy apologies for taking so long to get a new chapter up! this semester is murdering me lmao
> 
> thank you so much for the kind response!! at the moment this is shaping up to be around fourteen chapters and i plan to keep getting better and better as time goes on!

“Taako, get your ass out of bed!” Lup screams, and Taako sits bolt upright. He immediately swings both legs over the side of the bed and leaps down, grabbing his wallet and keys as he goes. He shoves his feet into the nearest shoes and makes a break for it. Heart pounding, he’s already halfway to the door when he realizes that there’s no logical reason for her to be sounding an alarm. They’re safe now. They have a home and a family and it’s not just them versus the world anymore.

He turns on her slowly, glaring. “For what purpose?”

“You have a gentleman caller,” she says with a smirk. In her hand is Taako’s cell phone, which she holds out to him, raising her eyebrows. 

“Whomst?” he asks, caught halfway between asleep and fading alarm.

“I dunno, but he said he’s sorry he missed your call yesterday.” Lup presses the phone into his hand and offers him a wink before grabbing her purse off the table and heading for the door. Taako watches her go, all towering heels and tight black dress, and briefly wonders where she’s heading. 

Then she slams the door and her words sink in and Taako clutches the phone to his ear like his life depends on it.

“Morning, hot stuff,” he says, as sultry as he can manage.

“It’s one o’clock in the afternoon,” says Kravitz on the other end of the phone call.

“Like I said, morning.” Taako wishes he had a phone with a cord so he could twirl it around a finger to occupy his body. There’s nervous energy running in his veins like lightning, and he starts to pace back and forth along the length of the studio apartment. It’s not a huge room, so it doesn’t take him long to step the whole way down and back.

“Sorry I missed your call yesterday,” Kravitz says, and he actually sounds genuinely apologetic. He has nothing to be sorry for, if Taako’s gonna be honest. He’d spent three days anxiously hovering over the phone, the napkin with Kravitz’s phone number written neatly on it clutched tightly in one fist, until Lup called him an idiot and scolded him until he actually dialed. He’d listened to it ring without breathing, and when the answering machine picked up he’d only stuttered out, “It’s Taako, uh, from the shitty diner? Fuck, sorry.” and hung up, immediately descending into Shame Hell.

“Nah, pretty boy, I just musta called at a bad time,” Taako says. He injects every ounce of charm he possesses into the sentence and prays to whatever deity Merle keeps trying to lovingly spoon-feed him that Kravitz will just let the disastrous first attempt be bygones. 

“I was having lunch with my boss,” Kravitz explains, and the apologetic tone is still in his voice. 

“Gross,” Taako says lightly, to hide the relief. He’s not entirely sure what he expected, but it’s nice to know his call wasn’t being avoided out of malice or something.

“I’d rather have been having lunch with you?” Kravitz says it like a question, like he’s unsure of himself, like that’s not the best fucking sentence Taako has ever heard in his entire shitty life.

“Uh,  _ hell yeah _ ,” Taako says with enthusiasm.

“Sorry?"

“I said hell fuckin’ yeah, homie. Name a time and place!” The words are out of his mouth before Taako remembers that, depending on the size of his paycheck and which bills are looming next, the time and place may have to be  _ later on _ and  _ somewhere cheap _ .

“Um, I’m not entirely sure what there is to do around here, as it were. I, well, I don’t go out overmuch,” Kravitz says.

“Chug ‘N Squeeze,” Taako’s mouth says before he can stop it. He immediately wants to leave this dimension. 

“I’m sorry?” There’s incredulity in Kravitz’s voice now. Taako is blushing from his collarbones to the roots of his hair. Thank god there’s no one home to see it.

“Chug ‘N Squeeze,” Taako says, because he’s all in now, baby, no backing out. “It’s like, a wine and pottery thing. Totes legit.”

Taako has no idea whether it is totes legit or not. The couple next door, a pair of bodybuilding lesbians who hang out and pump iron with Magnus on the weekends, claim that it’s the hottest new place for low-cost date nights. Carey had made a lovely vase last time, though apparently Killian had absolutely destroyed her clay-lump amalgamation the instant it came out of the kiln. From what they’d told Magnus, and from with Magnus had relayed to Taako, it’s a nice little place to drink wine and fuck up a perfectly good chunk of wet dirt, which sounds to Taako like a great first date.

“Wine and pottery,” Kravitz muses. “Sounds lovely.”

“Right? I thought so too. They let you keep the vase.”

“No promises on whether any vase I make would be worth keeping,” Kravitz laughs. Taako throws himself onto the couch with force, dislodging a battered old afgan that Dav had brought back ages ago from one of his many trips. The blanket is worn and frayed at the ends, but Taako picks it up off the floor and drapes it around himself anway. It smells like Lup’s perfume and there’s a stain at the corner from where Magnus had been whittling while bundled up and sliced his finger open and the edge is sewn haphazardly together thanks to Merle’s rudimentary stitching knowledge. The blanket has been with their little family for as long as Taako can remember, and it shows.

“I’m sure you’ll be great at vase making,” Taako assures him, picking at a loose thread. 

Kravitz laughs again, and if Taako isn’t careful he might accidentally start to fall for that sound.

“Friday night, perhaps?”

“It’s a date!” Taako is grinning so hard that it hurts his face a little bit, but that’s fine by him. He hasn’t had a date in  _ forever _ , not since his last relationship went way sideways and he ended up getting tossed back onto the street. He pushes the thoughts of the past back and gives what he thinks is a suitably bubbly goodbye, and presses his face into a pillow and screams as soon as he hangs up.

Okay. He has a date. With a guy who seems genuinely nice.

Ha. What a joke.

Sazed had seemed genuinely nice at first, too. He’d been all bright smiles and open hands and pats on the shoulder right up until the end, when he took Taako’s trust and twisted it into a knife and stabbed him in the back with it. From the second they’d been introduced, Sazed had been enigmatic and soft and so genuinely nice that Taako hadn’t even suspected his intentions might be anything but pure until he was shivering in a back alley with nowhere to go.

Taako sits up, sighs, and twists his hair into a hot mess of a topknot. He’s not here to think about his shit past. He’s here to put on his sister’s husband’s thick winter coat and walk himself down to the shitty diner, to pick up his first paycheck.

It’s freezing, of course, and Taako tucks his hands as deep into the pockets of the coat as they’ll go. The coat is too big, big enough that even Magnus could probably cram his muscley body into it without too much struggle, but it keeps the wind off, which is exactly what Taako needs it for. Barry says it’s going to start snowing within the next two days, and it’s apparently going to be brutal. 

Taako stops at the corner by the shitty diner, where a small crowd has gathered. They’re all murmuring amongst themselves, but he can hear a child’s piping voice cutting through the soft chatter.

“Find the lady!” the kid says, all childlike confidence. There’s a catch in his throat like he’s maybe getting sick, and when Taako peeks around the shoulders the man in front of him he can see that the kid is wearing the same old duster as he was the last time Taako saw him. He’s shivering visibly, tiny hands struggling to shuffle the beat-up deck of playing cards he’s using to hustle people out of the pocket change.

“Lemme try,” says a tall brute of a man, and the kid fixes him with the kind of bright grin that belongs on the faces of happy, well-loved children, not on street urchins who look like they haven’t had a decent meal in days.

“It’s simple, sir,” the kid says, laying out three cards on the rickety card table he’d probably salvaged from a dumpster. “See, here’s the queen of hearts, and here are two random cards. Keep your eye on the queen, and when I’m done shuffling, if you can still find her, you get to keep your money. If not, I keep it. It’s easy!”

And Taako watches as this guy loses every dollar in his wallet. It’s a thing of beauty, really, to watch this little boy swindle a grown man out of everything he owns. When all is said and done, the kid is twenty bucks richer, and the dude stalks away muttering.

Taako whistles appreciatively. “Good game, kiddo.”

“Thank you, sir!” The kid beams. “I’m trying very hard.”

“Yeah, well, maybe try to feed yourself sometime, eh? You look like a frozen corpse out here in this shitty weather,” Taako says. He glowers at the sky and huddles himself deeper into Barry’s coat when the wind chooses that moment to help him make his point, shaking dead leaves off trees and pulling his hair loose from it’s place on top of his head. 

“I’ll try,” the kid says, but he doesn’t look so sure.

“Listen, kid, the diner across the street may be shitty, but you can get hot food for cheap. Trust me, I’m all about hot food for cheap. I know what I’m talking about.”

“Thank you, sir! I’ll consider it!”

He goes back to shuffling his cards and Taako continues along his way.

Ren looks up when Taako enters, the little bell above the door signaling his arrival. She beams at him and gestures for him to come behind the counter, and he goes, following the scent of what he really hopes is cherry pie.

“Look!” she says enthusiastically. “I took your advice, about the graham cracker crumbs, and you were so right! It’s perfect!”

It is perfect. The pie is beautiful, golden flaky crust and oozing cherry filling, and Taako pretends to wipe a tear from his eye. He makes a big show of sniffling and fanning himself, pressing a hand to his sternum like a delicate southern belle about to collapse out of sheer joy, and Ren laughs.

“Good job,” he says eventually, when he’s worked his way through a round of theatrics. 

Ren gives him a blinding grin. “Thanks! I can’t believe I never thought of it before!”

“Not many people do. Hey, where’s my paycheck?”

“Over there,” Ren says, laughing and pointing to a small stack of white envelopes on the counter. He pats her on the head and crosses to it, rifling through until he finds with one with his name on it. He snorts when he sees the last name Taaco printed in neat font. It had been a joke, initially, when he and Lup had first been getting their birth certificates made, but for some reason it stuck, and now he’s gotta live with being Taako goddamn Taaco for the rest of his life. 

“Thanks so much,” he says, meaning it more than his breezy tone would indicate, and heads out. It’s snowing now, all tiny white flecks that cling to his eyelashes and melt on his fingers, and he frowns. The kid from the corner is gone, and Taako hopes he’s somewhere warmer than the cold, blustery streets.

As soon as he’s out of sight of the shitty diner, Taako tears into the envelope and takes out the check. He stops dead in his tracks and fights back the urge to cry a little bit. It’s not a lot, far from it, but it’s money that he needs and it’s money that he doesn’t have and who knows, maybe they’ll be able to make rent this month after all. 

The walk back to the apartment is spent shivering and squinting against the snowflakes that the wind tries to throw into his eyes. His hands are shaking hard enough that he has trouble getting the key into the lock, but he gets it eventually, and takes the stairs two at a time in his haste to get back into the warmth.

When he throws open the door, he’s met by Merle, fuming. 

“Yikes, my guy, what happened to you?” Taako asks.

Merle, angrily folding laundry on the couch, glowers with enough force that Taako can almost feel himself wilt like a houseplant left too long without water.

“Our landlord happened,” he grumbles.

“Oh,” Taako says. He feels as though his stomach has taken a tumble down a few flights of stairs and collapsed somewhere at the bottom in a heap.

“Yeah, oh,” Merle says darkly, white-knuckling one of Lucretia’s socks. He waves it through the air angrily when he continues. “Good ole John wants the rent a few days early this month. Says he’s thinking about upping it, too.”

“Fuck,” Taako says with feeling. “He just upped it last month.”

“Believe me, I know.” Merle frees the sock from his stranglehold and leans back, crossing his arm over his chest. They fall into silence, Merle fuming, Taako loosely wondering whether his income from the shitty diner will be enough to make up for Lup, Barry, and Merle losing all that income.

Lup comes home that evening with a smug look on her face and struts her way into the kitchen.

“Where’d you go all day?” Taako asks, raising an eyebrow at her slinky dress and towering heels. She’s wearing careful makeup, dramatic but not too much, all smokey eye and sensible lip color.

“Job interview,” she sings, and won’t answer any follow-up questions. 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi! remember this thing that i last updated a month ago? i remember it! man, this semester is actually going to murder me. i'm on the downward slope of things now, though, so hopefully i can keep updating this regularly and finish it in a timely manner!
> 
> thanks so much for the encouragement. really, i mean it. i was considering abandoning this entirely until i was less busy, or maybe even leaving it indefinitely, but the comments have been so lovely that i just _had_ to keep going.  <3

The thing is, everyone has a tragic backstory. 

Some are worse than others and some aren’t even all that tragic at a surface level, but they’re all traumatic and they’re all sad and they all come out after more than a few drinks. 

Years ago, when all Taako had was Lup, it was easy to dance around their tragic past. They already knew with heartbreaking clarity exactly what each other were going through, sharing it and overcoming it together, hand in hand against the circumstances. They knew all about being kicked out of their family’s houses as relative after relative got tired of Taako’s hyperactivity and Lup’s insistence on being called by the right name. They knew about sleeping in alleys and huddling together under one thin blanket and waking up numb with lips tinted blue by the cold. They knew about the cooking show and Sazed and the hardscrabble fight to get back on their feet. They didn’t have to ask. They already knew.

When the cooking show went to shit, they’d been freezing and desperate. In the end it was a newspaper that saved them, destined to be burned for warmth had Lup not noticed a listing for an apartment. The ad had said “Lonely old man seeking roommates because his actual roommate is never home. Call for details,” and they were so desperate that they’d rushed to the nearest payphone. Merle Highchurch, it turned out, was only half as creepy as the ad implied, and had more than enough space to stow the two of them. 

So they moved into the apartment with a short old dude with one arm who patted them on the backs and said, “This is a zone of truth. You have anything you need to talk about, go on and tell me. Just don’t expect advice or any of that shit.”

They resolutely did not take that offer. Or at least they tried not to, but Merle was a sucker for adopting charity cases and got lonely without his roommate Dav around all the time, and Magnus Burnsides was an emotional drunk.

“My wife is dead and I blame myself,” he’d said one night, both hands clutching an empty bottle of something that smelled poisonous, tears in his eyes.

“My aunt gave us twenty dollars and dropped us off in an alley far enough from home that we wouldn’t be able to find our way back,” Lup offered. She awkwardly patted his shoulder and he nodded distantly, probably not even listening, but the words were out there and now Magnus  _ knew _ about it, which gave Taako endless openings for terrible, terrible orphan jokes.

After that, Lucretia moved in, and Taako is pretty sure she’d had them all figured out from day one. She looked at him too clearly, like she could see right through his hand-waving, and it made him squirm. She never opened up her own can of worms, either, so the Tragic Backstory Balance was thrown entirely off.

Barry moved in because he simultaneously fell for Lup and fell on hard times, and the most tragedy they could draw out of him was a shrug and a story about dropping out of Necromancy School or some shit.

(“I was going to be a funeral director, but I had to drop out.”

“Ah shit, you were gonna do professional grave-robbing? Sick!”)

When Davenport came back from his overseas excursion, he’d grabbed Merle roughly by the elbow and dragged him into the hallway to have a shouting match about bringing home lost puppies and how they definitely could not legally keep that many people in the apartment. What followed was five young people clustered around a door with their ears to the wall, listening to a progressively sad argument that ultimately ended with a teary, “I never get to see my own kids. Might as well save these ones instead.”

Davenport had sighed and let them stay, provided that their evil landlord never learned exactly how many people they were cramming into the apartment. 

Kravitz, Taako muses, might be one of the first people he’s ever met without a tragic backstory. He sits next to him at their table and smiles and laughs at Taako’s jokes and Taako is entirely, completely smitten.

“So, do you have any family?” Kravitz asks during a lull in the conversation. They're halfway through what is shaping up to be the best wine and pottery night Taako has ever attended, nevermind that he'd never actually been to one of these things. He's going to have to tell Magnus to thank the scary butch couple who recommended the place.

“Oh Jesus, do I,” Taako says. He rolls his eyes and takes a dainty sip of his wine. “I have like a fuckton of family. So many family. It’s sickening."

Kravitz laughs warmly, happy eyes on the lump of wet clay that he's been abusing all evening. “Tell me about them.”

Taako takes a moment to scrutinize his face. He’s smiling, leaning forward, expression open and interested as he glances up from the potential vase. So far, he hasn’t said a single thing that raised Taako’s suspicions. He’s been nothing but kind, though he  _ did _ order a wine that was very distinctly not sweet enough for Taako's taste, so as far as first dates go he’s doing a solid 7/10. Better than any first date Taako’s ever had, that’s for sure, so Taako decides to open up a bit, just this once.

“Well, for starters, I have this sister,” he says, tucking some hair behind his ear. He’d left it down, and it regretting the decision. It’s snowing, which means humidity, which means volume, and he is distinctly not in the mood to wrestle with his hairstyle. 

Kravitz hums in interest, and Taako continues.

“We’re very close. She’s great, but obviously I’m the hotter twin, natch. Her boyfriend is actual white bread, but he’s chill. Wants to dissect corpses for a living or something. Then there’s Maggie, who is literally six feet of pure hyperactive positivity, and Lucretia, who I think is probably plotting to kill the rest of us in our sleep or maybe take over the world? Like, at least the city. If she wanted to, she’d be mayor in no time flat, and the rest of us would have to start paying library tax or some shit.”

“They sound wonderful,” Kravitz says, and Taako gets the distinct feeling he’s being sincere. He better be. Taako’s family is the actual best, and he will absolutely get into a physical altercation over it if necessary. He has in the past. He’ll do it again.

“What about you, thug? You got any family?” he asks. He sticks a thumb into the baller vase he's been creating. It's extremely tasteful, and he has a feeling that he might give it to Merle to put some kind of flowers in. It'd look great on the counter by the coffee pot.

“Not as such,” Kravitz says. He spreads his hands and shrugs, not outwardly bothered. Taako frowns but hides it behind his glass. “My boss is as close to family as I have. She’s excellent, don’t get me wrong, but a bit on the overbearing side.”

“Oh, my guy, I get you. My weird-ass adoptive dads will  _ not  _ get out of my business. Always trying to feed me or preach at me or convince me to go to the Bahamas or Venice or somewhere equally scenic.”

“My boss regularly encourages me to invest in a pet bird,” Kravitz offers, and Taako literally cannot help himself. The look on Kravitz’s face is so openly earnest when he says that, like he’s been through this conversation an endless amount of times, and Taako finds it absolutely fucking  _ hilarious _ . It’s so sincere, so deadpan, that he bursts into laughter, giggling and snorting before he can remember to tone it down. It’s a loud laugh, outright joyous and boisterous, escaping at the absurdity of Kravitz’s boss  _ regularly encouraging him to invest in a pet bird _ . Jesus. Like that’s even real. Like people like that exist. 

Taako claps both hands over his mouth, coloring from his collarbones to his hairline, and looks at Kravitz with wide eyes.

“Sorry,” he says into his hands, but a smile is spreading across Kravitz’s face, and wow, he has the nicest smile Taako has ever seen.

“Don’t be,” he says on a laugh, eyes crinkled with mirth. “I like your laugh.”

Impossibly, Taako blushes even harder, but covers it with a raised eyebrow and a “Yeah, you better.”

They chitchat for a while longer about nothing of consequence. Kravitz, as it turns out, has actually considered taking his boss’s advice and buying a bird, and Taako loudly and wholeheartedly encourages it. He’s already tall, dark, and handsome. All he needs now is a crow or raven or, hell, even a bat to complete the aesthetic. 

“Please tell me you’ll look into bird ownership,” Taako begs as they exit the Chug 'N Squeeze, vases in hand. Kravitz had insisted on paying, and Taako only put up the bare minimum of a fight. He technically could afford it, but he’d also like to maybe buy a new pair of flats for work sometime in the coming week, so when it came down to it, he only pouted a little bit when Kravitz took the bill. 

“I will,” Kravitz laughs. It’s snowing, and the tiny flakes drift down in the lamplight to land in his hair and on his shoulders, and Taako gets the insane urge to grab him by the hand. His fingers twitch and he considers it for a moment before deciding, fuck it, he genuinely likes this one. Might as well.

Kravitz doesn’t seem to mind. The corners of his mouth hitch up a little higher when Taako twines their fingers together, but he doesn’t miss a beat in waxing poetic about the orchestra.

“And the viola,” he says, eyes round with enthusiasm, swinging their hands ever so slightly. “I cannot stand the man who plays it, but even I have to admit that he does a phenomenal job.”

“And what do you play?” Taako asks, remembering Lup’s brief stint with the violin. They’d been living with an affluent uncle at the time. He’d frowned down at them, turned up his nose, and insisted that they get cultured if he was going to dare allow himself be seen in public with them. This led to Lup discovering a deep-rooted love for the violin, while Taako fumbled his way through six months of French before their uncle decided he’d had enough and passed them along.

“Oh, I don’t play. Well, I play piano, but for the orchestra, I conduct,” Kravitz says, ducking his head. He looks almost sheepish.

“Oh, sick,” Taako says enthusiastically. “You get to wave around the wand thing. Hell yeah.”

Kravitz laughs, open and happy, and Taako is going to have to be careful or he thinks he might really fall for that laugh. 

“I get to wave the wand thing,” he confirms. 

“So by day you’re a necromancer, and by night you’re a conductor. That’s way cool.”

“I’m not a necromancer,” Kravitz corrects, but he’s grinning. “Far from it. I’m a funeral director. I help with putting the souls to rest, not the other way around.”

“That’s exactly what a necromancer would say,” Taako says. He glances up. They’re almost back at his apartment building, where Kravitz had insisted on walking him, despite the snow and windchill. Taako is very glad he did. “This is me.”

Kravitz looks up at the building, and Taako tries not to squirm. It’s rundown, he knows, with faded paint on the doorframe and rusted fire escapes barely clinging to the brick. The fire escape to his own apartment is covered in the brittle remains of potted plants and a few pairs of shoes, light falling out the window through tattered curtains. He can see shadows moving behind them, and the curtains twitch in a way that lets him know that at least one person is watching him. 

“I had a lovely time,” Kravitz says. He gives Taako’s hand a squeeze.

“Me too,” Taako replies. He turns to face Kravitz, who is staring at him with something halfway between awe and nervousness. Taako opens his mouth to ask if something is wrong and can’t get the words out past the best goodnight kiss he’s ever had the blessing to receive.

Kravitz’s lips are cold, but Taako leans into him, hands coming up to rest on his shoulders as Kravitz pulls him closer. It doesn’t last nearly as long as Taako would like, and Kravitz pulls back, eyes half-shut, those cold lips curled up in a smile.

“I’ll call you?” he says, almost tentative.

“Uh, you’d fuckin’ better,” Taako tells him, and he laughs, and Taako retreats into the building.

He opens the door to the apartment and is met with an armful of his sister, who is shrieking at the top of her lungs. Magnus is hot on her heels, reaching over Lup’s head to grab Taako by the shoulders and give him a firm shake, almost dislodging Lup from her stranglehold on Taako’s body. Taako almost drops the amazing vase. 

“We saw the goodnight kiss!” Lup shouts. 

“Did it go good?” Magnus asks. “It looked like it went good!”

“Maybe if you’d let him go, he could answer,” Lucretia says from her place on the couch. She doesn’t look up from her book, but she adjusts her reading glasses on her nose pointedly, and Lup and Magnus begrudgingly release Taako.

“You,” Taako says, leveling a finger in Lucretia’s direction. He tosses her the vase, which she catches with a look of confusion. “You’re my favorite. Take this vase as a token of my appreciation.”

“C’mon, Koko,” Lup complains. She grabs him by the elbow and hauls him toward the couch, where she gives him a firm shove until he’s sitting next to a now-smiling Lucretia. He crosses his arms and glares at her, eyebrows raised, lips pursed.

“Yeah, Taako, give us the details,” Magnus pries. 

“He’s a very nice gentleman who one day hopes to own a bird,” Taako says primly. 

“You infuriate me,” Lup says, but she’s laughing, and Taako resolves to actually give her the details sometime tomorrow. Not right now, not when he can still feel the wine buzzing like starlight in his temples. Not with the ghost of the best goodnight kiss known to mankind still tingling on his lips. Not when he can still feel Kravitz’s hand in his, cold and firm and perfect.

“I live to infuriate,” Taako says. “Did you do anything interesting today, sister dearest?”

“Oh, you know. Me and Barry went and visited Pringles,” she says, looking at him like she has a secret that she desperately wants to share.

“The fake ID guy? Why’d you need him?” Taako asks, giving her the exact amount of prompting that she needs.

“Well, after we visited Pringles, we had job interviews at the funeral home across from the shitty diner. The exact funeral home, I believe, that your beautiful date manages.”

“Oh, no way.”

“Oh, yes way.” Lup jerks her chin toward the kitchen, where Barry is stirring a pot of something on the stove. Her face softens when she looks at him, like he means the entire world to her, and usually it sickens Taako to see such a blatant look of love on her face. Right now, he thinks he gets the sentiment. 

“And then what?” he prods when it seems that Lup is entirely caught up in staring at her denim-clad husband.

“And then Barold talked us through our interview, and we used our fake licenses to convince the owner of the place that we’re good employees, and now I work in a funeral home!”

It’s Taako’s turn to launch himself at his sister, latching his arms around her neck with gusto. She cackles wildly and falls backward until she’s trapped on the couch with a lap full of her grinning brother. He knocks their heads together and runs a hand through her hair, ruining the neat part, and she hisses in a halfhearted complaint.

“That’s so great, Lulu!” he shouts into her ear. “Hell yeah, homie!”

“You know, I got a job too,” Barry calls from the kitchen.

Taako tilts in Lup’s laugh and cranes his neck until he can look Barry in the eye when he says, “Then come on over here, big boy, and I’ll sit in your lap too.”

“Okay, ew,” Lup laughs, and shoves at him. He goes to the floor in an unceremonious heap, all sprawling limbs and indignant shrieking, and Lucretia makes a noise of complaint when she lifts her feet onto the coffee table to avoid Taako’s flailing.

“You’ve murdered me,” he groans, pressing both hands to his chest. “You’ve done it. You’ve killed America’s favorite waitress.”

“Can I have your stuff?” Magnus asks, and earns himself a strong foot to the knee. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> idk when i decided that it's a Family Meme to refer to anything that goes on in a funeral home as necromancy but it's 100% a Family Meme now


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so. it's, uh, been a while. ha. oops?
> 
> i kinda sorta abandoned this a while ago bc i got, as they say, Hella Depressed, but now i'm back on track and have energy to do things and i really, really like this story, so i've decided to finish it! there's still eight or so chapters left and i can't promise to have a regular posting schedule, but i'm going to do my damn best. this will be finished. i promise you that.
> 
> so yeah. thanks for being here! i gotta say, the wonderful comments have had a huge role in my determination to come back and finish this bad boy. thank you all so much!!

Taako shivers his way to work with his head wrapped in the thick red scarf Merle had knitted for him two years ago and with his hands stuffed deep in Barry’s too-big coat. In his pocket, his phone vibrates insistently. It’s Kravitz, of course, but not even that lovestruck butterfly-in-stomach feeling of receiving a text from his gorgeous maybe-boyfriend is going to convince Taako to remove his hands from his pockets. Absolutely not. No fuckin’ way.

He keeps a careful eye out when he passes the corner where the homeless boy sometimes swindles the unsuspecting out of their cash. In the two weeks since he’s seen him last, Taako had been very sure to toss a glance down that alleyway, just in case he needed to swoop in and rescue the kid from some terrible fate. He knows exactly what can befall a street kid when no one has their back. He’s not about to let that cycle continue. 

The kid is absent, as he has been for the past two weeks, but Taako isn’t too worried. Street kids keep moving. Child protective services is a real bitch sometimes, especially when you emphatically don’t want to be taken into state custody. It’s entirely possible the boy just picked up and moved shop. He just shrugs and keeps on walking. Though he might be willing to offer a word of advice on how to not die out here on the streets, some random kid isn’t his responsibility. 

The bell over the door of the shitty diner dings cheerfully when Taako enters. Inside, it’s a packed madhouse of people trying to escape the cold for the cheapest hot soup money can buy, and he puts thoughts of the boy on the corner out of his mind as he sweeps into the kitchen.   
  


Taako leaves work six hours later. He steps into the evening gloom and glares at the snowflakes that fall, thick and fast, from the sky. The wind rattles the bare trees and cuts through Taako’s scarf like a hot knife through butter. The weather forecast called for a snowstorm, and for once the weatherman was right. The weather is, in a word, shitty. 

He has to squint to see through the swirling snow, but Taako is pretty sure he sees a short figure sitting on the homeless boy’s corner, and his heart drops.

No way. No fuckin’ way.

“Hey, kid!” he shouts, hurrying as fast as his non-slip shoes and false nonchalance will let him. The figure does not look up. It’s definitely that kid, huddled deep into the too-big duster and sitting on the corner in a snowdrift. The closer Taako gets, the more his heart pounds. 

The kid isn’t sitting. He looks like he’d collapsed there and hadn’t had the strength to get back up.

“Kid?” Taako says. There’s no response, so he squats down next to the boy, who isn’t even shivering, which is Bad News. That right there is Hella Fucking Bad News. He reaches out a hand and shakes the boy’s shoulder, earning himself only a soft exhale in response. Good. The kid is breathing at least. His face, when Taako smacks it, is ice cold. His lips are blue and his eyelashes are full of snow.

“Ah, fuck,” Taako says, and makes a snap decision. He takes his hands out of his pockets. His cell phone is half-dead and he’s almost out of minutes for the month, but he hits the redial button anyway. 

Lup picks up on the first ring. “Yes, dear little brother?”

“How much does an ambulance cost?” Taako says, voice breathy, as he fumbles for a pulse. His hands are too numb to feel anything. The temperatures are at rock bottom, and the windchill is killer. The kid is alive, he knows that, but the question remains: how alive is he?

“Where are you,” Lup says. There is no emotion in her voice, which means she is terrified.

“Block from home. It’s not for me, it’s for a kid.”

“Explain. Now,” Lup orders. Her voice is distant, and he knows she has him on speakerphone. There’s a clatter, like she’s gotten up and is, Taako hopes, hurrying to put on shoes and a coat. He hears her yell for Magnus, which is a blessing. No way could he carry the kid back to the apartment alone, and he knows without having to be told that he can’t afford an ambulance. He could barely afford his portion of the rent the day before. 

“There’s a kid who does card grifts by the shitty diner and he’s, uh, not waking up,” Taako tells her. 

“A kid?” Magnus hollers into the phone. Taako winces at the volume and nearly drops the phone. He barely manages to cling on with numb fingers. Magnus says, “We’ll be right there, don’t move,” and the line goes dead.

“Hurry,” Taako tells the silence, and shoves the phone into his pocket. 

The boy makes a small noise, just a tiny little whimper, but to Taako it sounds like the heavens have opened up and angels themselves are singing holy hymns to him. He makes a mental note that if this kid survives intact, he’ll let Merle drag him to church for a whole-ass month. Maybe even two, if Magnus and Lup get here within the next five minutes.

“Hang in there, boychik,” he mutters, rubbing at the boy’s cheek. His eyelids flutter, but he doesn’t open them. “If you die, I might be able to pull some strings and get you a funeral for hella cheap, but don’t make me make that phone call, alright? I don’t wanna bug my boyfriend with your inconvenient death.”

Magnus sprints into view a moment later. He’s not wearing a coat, just his lumpy knitted sweater (another gift from Merle, who has tried to teach them all one-handed knitting at least once, to little success) and his untied work boots. Lup is behind him in her hat and gloves, coat zipped to her chin.

“What happened?” she demands as Magnus hoists the boy into his warm arms. The kid remains limp and Magnus frowns. Without a word, he turns on his heel and heads for home. Taako watches him go and prays to whatever god Merle keeps trying to get him to worship that he gets there before the kid turns to solid ice.

“He’s homeless,” Taako says, as if that’s answer enough. It is.

Lup rattles out a sigh and grabs him by the elbow. She tugs him toward their apartment and they trudge through the snow that has already filled in Magnus’s giant footprints. The snow is falling so thick and so fast that he can’t even see the light on in their fourth-floor apartment windows from the ground outside, but he knows that the red string lights in the window must be on. They’re a beacon. They mean  _ come in, come home, hurry, something is wrong. _ They mean  _ be careful, our landlord is here _ and they mean  _ our heat has been shut off  _ and they mean  _ someone is sick, someone is hurt, someone is broken. _ They mean  _ family emergency _ .

The twins take the stairs at a steady pace. They do not speak. Both are lost in memories of their own narrow escapes with death at the hands of a windchill temperature. Taako remembers shivering in alleys and sleeping in subway stations and huddling around a trashcan fire with a dozen other members of the city’s forgotten populace. They’re not good memories.

“You went to med school!” Magnus is yelling when Lup opens the door. The kid is on the couch under a mountain of blankets. Every bed is bare and Magnus looks like he has half a mind to grab the rugs next. 

“Kid, I dropped out after one semester because I got my damn arm cut off,” Merle complains. He’s standing next to the couch, running his fingers over his beard. He looks tense. He looks afraid.

“Just, I don’t know, try something! He’s a  _ kid _ ,” Magnus says. 

“All I can do is get him warm and pray,” Merle says, defeated. Magnus sits heavily onto the old coffee table. He hasn’t taken his boots off yet, and melting snow clings to his hair. His eyes are wide and sad and his jaw is set, hard and defiant against what seem like impossible odds. If there’s one thing Taako likes about Magnus, (and he’d never ever say it out loud, yuck, no way) it’s that Magnus doesn’t believe in a no-win scenario. He’s got a heart of gold that’ll keep beating even when he’s out of options and out of time. Magnus Burnsides will not let this child die, even if he has to fistfight Death himself. 

“He’ll make it,” Magnus says. “He’ll be okay.”

They settle in to sit a silent vigil over the child whose name they don’t even know. 


End file.
